A Gram-stain positive, non-motile, spherical, red-pigmented and facultatively anaerobic bacterium, designated strain 6.1(T), was isolated from a crude oil recovery water sample from the Huabei oil field in China. The novel strain exhibited tolerance of UV irradiation (> 1000 J m(-2)). Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence comparisons, strain 6.1(T) shows high similarity to Deinococcus citri DSM 24791(T) (98.1%) and Deinococcus gobiensis I-0(T) (97.8%), with less than 93.5% similarity to other closely related taxa. The major cellular fatty acids were identified as summed feature 3 (C-16:1 omega 7c and/or iso-C-15:0 2-OH), followed by iso-C-17:1 omega 9c and C-16:0. The polar lipid profile was found to contain phospholipids, glycolipids, phosphoglycolipids and aminophospholipids. The predominant respiratory quinone was identified as MK-8. The DNA G + C content was determined to be 68.3 mol %. DNA-DNA hybridization between strain 6.1(T) and D. citri DSM 24791(T) was 45.6 +/- 7.1% and with D. gobiensis I-O-T was 36.6 +/- 4.7%. On the basis of phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic and phenotypic data, we conclude strain 6.1(T) represents a novel species of the genus Deinococcus, for which we propose the name Deinococcus petrolearius sp. nov. The type strain is 6.1(T) (= CGMCC 1.15053(T) = KCTC 33744(T)).

Deinococcaceae; Deinococcus petrolearius sp nov.; New species; Oil field; Polyphasic

China University of Petroleum (Huadong)